Thursday, July 31, 2008

This table shows the leading English Premier League goal scorers from different nations around the world since 92/93. I categorized the nations by the player's national team affiliation which in quite a few cases doesn't match the birth nation. (Minimum of 30 goals)

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

This Yanks Abroad Map shows where all of the American exports are currently playing in Europe. I used the list they have over at the Yanks-Abroad website. I've only included players in the top two divisions in their respective countries.

I placed the icons at each players home stadium, just click on the player icons and the club and player names will appear. Zoom all the way in on an icon to see that players home stadium and it's surroundings.

It's somewhat easier to navigate if you click on "View Larger Map" and go to the google maps page. There is a list on the left column of the map with the clubs and players that you can use by zooming in to your desired level and clicking through the listed club names.

If you have Google Earth, this will work with that as well. Just click the "view larger map" link above and then click "open in google earth" above the map on the google maps page. Then you can just hit play and it will zoom you around to all of the clubs in order.

[I finally got around to updating this map that was originally posted in March (thanks to Unprofessionalfoul for the link and the unintended reminder). I'm going to attempt to keep it up to date over the coming transfer weeks, if you notice anything that needs updating please let me know]

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Senegal and former MLS player MamadouDiallo has played professionally in nearly every corner of our planet including Europe, USA, The Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Here is a map and information about his amazing journeys around the world.

Click to Enlarge

Diallo played at 15 clubs on 4 continents in 14 years. He was never at a single club for more than 2 years as he did have a bit of a reputation as a selfish player.

Diallo scored 26 goals in the 2000 season with the Tampa Bay Mutiny, tied with Stern John for second most in MLS history for a season and one behind Roy Lassiter's 27 goal total in 1996.

Diallo moved to clubs over 1000 miles from each other 11 times in his career with the longest single move in his career being the 6368 miles from NY/NJ Metrostars to Al Ahli in Saudi Arabia.

Monday, July 28, 2008

These are some all-time team and player disciplinary stats from the English Premier League since it was formed in 92/93. For the Player stats, I only used current players who will (at least for now) be in the Premiership next season.

Friday, July 25, 2008

I blame Luis from the Red Card and Chicago Tribune for this random post. Ever since his Marco Pablo Pappa/Notorius B.I.G. reference a few days back about the Chicago Fire's recent signing, I haven't been able to get "papa" out of my head. On top of that, last night during the MLS all-star game I ordered out to one of my favorite local pizza spots, Papa's Pizza. All of that led me to this randomness, players with "papa" in their name and for good measure I threw in some "mama's" too.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

This year will be the 5th edition of the MLS all-star game featuring a foreign club as the opponent, with MLS taking on West Ham United for this season's game. Obviously, the game is totally pointless outside of entertainment value, but the MLS all-stars have done well so far with a 4-0-0 record and a combined 10-2 scoreline against the foreign opposition. Here is a little rundown of the previous "MLS Takes on the World" games.

Monday, July 21, 2008

There is quite a bit of interesting knowledge on the official MLSnet player pages, from career stats to personal life info. For this post, I've gone through the international players bios and picked out some of the most interesting non-soccer related tidbits from the "Personal" section at the bottom of most of the players pages.

Wilman Conde (CHI)Learned a good portion of his English by playing video games.

Tomasz Frankowski (CHI)Speaks fluent English, Polish, Spanish, and French and is involved in real estate in Poland.

Cuauhtemoc Blanco (CHI)Has appeared as a contestant on Mexican television's "Bailando Por Un Bueno," a reality dance competition show and if he couldn't be a soccer player, would want to be a professional boxer

Andy Herron (CHI)Recorded a reggae CD in Costa Rica titled "Playa Bonita" ("Beautiful Beach") and would like to sing professionally after soccer.

Francisco Mendoza (CHV)"I used to play basketball in school but I didn't keep playing since I am very short."

Guillermo Barros Schelotto (CLB)His father is a doctor.

Andy Iro (CLB)When he is not playing soccer, he is hunting wild animals.

Friday, July 18, 2008

I realise comparing MLS wages to player wages in England is not even close to a fair comparison, but it is still interesting to look at the type of salary handicap Major League Soccer has in comparison to some of the richest leagues in the world.

Here are the "guaranteed compensations" of the players on the MLS all star game-day roster for the 2008 season.

Comparison: According to a 2006 BBC article on player wages, Championship players in England earn an average salary of about $385,000, League One players $130,000, and League Two players earn $95,000.

West Ham's Lucas Neill reportedly earns about £60,000 a week which converts to almost $500,000 every month, more than any MLS player's YEARLY wage outside of the Designated Players. Is he really that much better than some of the MLS All-Stars on this list?

In the 2006/2007 season Watford had the lowest wage bill by a longshot in the EPL. Their total wages added up to about $35,000,000 for the entire squad, more than twice as much as all of the MLS all-star salaries combined.

The Columbus Crew's Robbie Rogers, an original selection before being pulled away by the US Olympic squad, was the lowest paid player selected with an annual wage of $57,500.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

I've been a bit short on time lately so I'm going to take the easy way out today and post an interesting Fernando Torres video I ran across on Youtube. The clip shows a 12 year old El Niño scoring goals against the AC Milan youth squad. "The Kid" showed some amazing skill even at that young age. (and he didn't look that much different either).

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

SuperLiga™, a premier tournament that pits the best of the United States against the best of Mexico, returns with its second edition to award the heftiest winner’s purse in North American soccer history.

Being that it is a "North American" tournament, I thought it would be interesting to look at which players on the club rosters in Superliga are not originally from CONCACAF countries.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Yesterday, I posted the World's Longest Soccer Road Trips. I decided to continue with the road trip theme today and come up with some longest trips for the major European leagues.

The longest trip in the top couple of divisions of Europe that I could find was in the Spanish Second Division with a seperation of 1,317 miles between Canary Islands based Tenerife and Gimnàstic, who are based just outside of Barcelona.

The farthest trips in England are around the same distance as Chicago to Columbus in MLS, two "nearby" rivals.

England292 miles - Premier LeagueNewcastle United to Portsmouth - 470km

Friday, July 11, 2008

These are the longest road trips (at least 3,000km) around the world for clubs that play in the same league. I chose to include only the longest trips from each league because clubs like Luch-Energia Vladivostok and Perth Glory are pretty much thousands of miles from every team in their leagues.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Tonight is the 14th regular season installment of the "L.A. SuperClasico" between the Galaxy and Chivas USA. This is a breakdown of all of the goals and assists in the first 13 regular season Los Angeles Galaxy - Chivas USA matchups.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

I was curious where many of the current and past Brazilian soccer players were specifically from in Brazil so I decided to make a map. I tried to use a fairly broad cross-section of 50 different Brazilian players past and present, from Adriano to Zico.

Does anybody know of any well-known players from the Amazon regions of Brazil? I know Francisco Lima who played for Roma a few years back and is currently with Brescia was born in Manaus, the capital of Amazonas. Any others?

Sunday, July 6, 2008

I've noticed in the past that there are a quite a few Traoré's and Touré's playing soccer in Europe and Asia (and even one Touré in the USL-1 in the United States). Here are all of the Traoré's and Touré's currently playing around the world that I could find.

Saturday, July 5, 2008

The Colorado Rapids continued their Fourth of July dominance in MLS with a 4-0 pounding of the New York Red Bulls last night. That makes them 11-1-1 over the past 13 seasons on the American holiday. Besides their fantastic win-loss record, they've drawn around 550,000 people to the stadiums on July 4th home games.

I bet that the Colorado Rapids wish they could carry over their 4th holiday results to the rest of the season. In the past 12 years, they've had 10 wins out of 12 games and over a half a million people in attendance on the date.

It's funny that, although it's a small sample with only one game on July 4, Canada's Toronto FC is the only team with a perfect win record on America's Independence day.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

This is a list of the shortest soccer players that are currently playing professionally around the world. The players listed range from 5ft 1in (1.55m) to a maximum of 5ft 5in (1.65m). For the majority of the list, I used the heights listed at the ESPNsoccernet player profile pages. If the player's height was not listed at ESPN, I generally used the official club pages. In the few cases where the height was not listed in either of those locations, I used the wikipedia height. All heights are listed in meters.

Diego Buonanotte - River Plate

Height (m)

Player

Club

Nationality

Position

1.55

Jafal Rashed

Al Sadd (Qatar)

Qatar

MF

1.58

Élton Jose Xavier Gomes

Al Nasr (Saudi Arabia)

Brazil

MF

1.60

Madson

América de Natal (Brazil)

Brazil

MF

1.60

Maximiliano Moralez

Racing (Argentina)

Argentina

MF

1.60

Levi Porter

Leicester City (England)

England

MF

1.61

Diego Buonanotte

River Plate (Argentina)

Argentina

MF

1.61

Elgabry Rangel

Tecos (Mexico)

Mexico

DF

1.62

Carlinhos Bala

Sport Recife (Brazil)

Brazil

FW

1.62

Christian Lara

Barcelona SC (Ecuador)

Ecuador

MF

1.62

Juan Cuevas

Gimnasia (Argentina)

Argentina

FW

1.62

Franco Niell

Argentinos Juniors (Argentina)

Argentina

FW

1.62

Joãozinho

Levski Sofia (Bulgaria)

Brazil

MF

1.63

Mohammad Al Shalhoub

Al Hilal (Saudi Arabia)

Saudi Arabia

MF

1.63

Pablo Piatti

Estudiantes (Argentina)

Argentina

MF

1.63

Christian Bermúdez

Atlante (Mexico)

Mexico

MF

1.63

Zinha

Toluca (Mexico)

Brazil/Mexico

FM

1.63

Bakari Koné

OGC Nice (France)

Cote d'Ivoire

FW

1.64

Danilinho

Atlético Mineiro (Brazil)

Brazil

MF

1.64

Ludovic Giuly

A.S.Roma (Italy)

France

MF

1.64

Sebastian Giovinco

Juventus (Italy)

Italy

MF

1.64

José Joel González

CF Monterrey (Mexico)

Mexico

MF

1.64

Maximiliano Biancucchi

Flamengo (Brazil)

Argentina

MF/FW

1.64

Allan Alemán

Liberia Mia (Costa Rica)

Costa Rica

FW

1.64

Alejandro Gómez

Arsenal da Sarandi (Argentina)

Argentina

MF

1.64

Maximiliano Estévez

Racing Club (Argentina)

Argentina

FW

1.65

Aaron Lennon

Tottenham (England)

England

MF

1.65

Emiliano Insúa

Liverpool (England)

Argentina

DF

1.65

Massimo Murdocca

Queensland Roar (Australia)

Australia

MF

1.65

Alex Nimo

Real Salt Lake (USA)

Liberia

FW

1.65

José Francisco Torres

Pachuca (Mexico)

Mexico/USA

MF

1.65

Luis Montes

Pachuca (Mexico)

Mexico

MF

1.65

Martín Bravo

San Martin de San Juan (Argentina)

Argentina

FW

1.65

Tita

Ankaraspor (Turkey)

Brazil

MF

1.65

Milton Núñez

Olimpia (Honduras)

Honduras

FW

1.65

Rodrigo Ruiz

Tecos (Mexico)

Chile

FW

1.65

Naji Majrashi

Al Shabab (Saudi Arabia)

Saudi Arabia

FW

1.65

Erivélton

Atlético Paranaense (Brazil)

Brazil

DF

1.65

Jadílson

Curzeiro (Brazil)

Brazil

DF

1.65

Paulinho

Maccabi Haifa (Israel)

Brazil

MF

1.65

Vitor Júnior

Santos (Brazil)

Brazil

MF

1.65

Boris Sagredo

Colo-Colo (Chile)

Chile

MF

1.65

Miroslav Ivanov

Levski Sofia (Bulgaria)

Bulgaria

MF

Depending on which number you believe, Élton Jose Xavier Gomes may be the shortest player. He is listed at 1.53m on wikipedia, 1.56m at this Corinthians site, and in this Reuters article he is listed at 1.58m.

I didn't find any goalkeepers that met the criteria for this list, but Oscar Perez Rojas of UANL Mexico came the closest at 1.69m (5ft7in).

Interesting that more than half of these short players are from Argentina, Brazil, or Mexico.

There are certainly discrepencies in these players listed heights, depending on what site you're looking at. If you have any corrections or additional players I can add to the list, please feel free to let me know.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Tonight is the second leg of the Copa Libertadores Final between LDU Quito of Ecuador and Fluminense of Brazil. LDU holds a 4-2 advantage after the first leg heading back to Rio for the return leg.

These are the last five Libertadores finals that have included clubs from nations outside of Brazil or Argentina. The last four of these matchups have ended with penalty kicks going all the way back to the 1998 game, the last time an Ecuadorian club made the final of the tournament. The last two matchups have been won by the "outsiders", but before that, it had been since 1991 since a non-Brazilian/Argentinian club had won the cup.

LDU is looking to become the first Libertadores Champion from Ecuador following two runner-up finishes by Barcelona SC in the 90's. The winner goes on to the World Club Championship in Japan, where the South American sides have won three out of the first four tournaments.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

In cased you missed it, Ecuador's LDU beat Brazil's Fluminense (at nearly 9,000 feet altitude) with four first-half goals on their way to a 4-2 win in the first leg of South America's Copa Libertadores final last Wednesday. They're still far from putting away the series because they'll have to play in front of nearly 100,000 Brazilian fans at the Maracanã in Rio tomorrow night (where Flu beat Boca Juniors and São Paulo by two goals each in the last two rounds).

I always find it interesting to look into players past clubs to see their career progression prior to being on a "Championship-level" club. These are all of the players on Fluminense and LDU that have played in nations outside of Brazil and Ecuador respectively.

Fluminense Players That Have Played Outside of Brazil:

Player

Club

Club Country

Years Abroad

Gabriel

Malaga CF

Spain

2005-06

Thiago Silva

FC Porto

Dynamo Moscow

Portugal

Russia

2004

2005

Luiz Alberto

Saint-Étienne

Real Sociedad

France

Spain

2000-01

2001-02/2004/05

Júnior César

Santos Laguna

Mexico

2005-06

Ygor

IK Start

Norway

2007 - (On Loan)

Somália

NK MIK CM Celje

Feyenoord

Al-Hilal

Busan

Slovenia

Netherlands

Saudi Arabia

Korea

1998-99

1999-2000

2003-04

2005

Washington

Fenerbahçe

Tokyo Verdy 1969

Urawa Reds

Turkey

Japan

Japan

2002

2005

2006-07

Thiago Neves

Vegalta Sendai

Japan

2006

Dodô

Ulsan Hyundai

Oita Trinita

Al-Ain

Korea

Japan

UAE

2003-04

2005

2006-07

Roger

Vissel Kobe

Japan

2004-05

Fabinho

Gamba Osaka

Shimizu S-Pulse

Japan

Japan

2002

2004

Dario Conca

River Plate

Universidad Catolica

Rosario Central

Argentina

Chile

Argentina

2002-04

2004-06

2006

Rafael

Messina

Italy

2004-06

David

Yverdon

Pogoń Szczecin

Switzerland

Poland

2000/03-05

2002

Ricardo Berna

Vegalta Sendai

Japan

1998

LDU Quito Players That Have Played Outside of Ecuador:

Player

Club

Club Nation

Years Abroad

José Cevallos

Once Caldas

Colombia

2005

Norberto Araujo

Aldosivi

Arsenal de Sarandi

Racing de Cordoba

Sport Boys

Sporting Cristal

Argentina

Argentina

Argentina

Peru

Peru

1998-99

2000-01

2001

2002-03

2004-06

Agustin Delgado

Cruz Azul

Necaxa

Southampton

UNAM Pumas

Mexico

Mexico

England

Mexico

1998

1999-2001

2001-04

2005

Franklin Salas

Red Star Belgrade

Serbia

2007-08

Claudio Bieler

Colon de Santa Fe

Atlético Rafaela

Colo-Colo

Argentina

Argentina

Chile

2005-06

2006-07

2007

Joffre Guerrón

Boca Juniors

Getafe CF

Argentina

Spain

2005

After Tournament

Enrique Vera

Resistencia

Sol de America

Iteño

Paraguay

Paraguay

Paraguay

1999

2000-02

2003

Jairo Campos

KAA Gent

Belgium

2004

Damian Manso

Newell's Old Boys

SC Bastia

Xanthi

Argentina

France

Greece

1996-01/02-03/04-05

2001-02

2006-07

I've mentioned in the past that I follow the J-League, so I think it's pretty cool that Fluminense has 6 players that have played in Japan in their career. In fact, Washington was the leading scorer for the league champion Urawa Red Diamonds in 2006, with 26 goals and was also named to the league best eleven that season.

It's really amazing to see all of the former nations where the players have played, some of these guys are real journeymen. Here's a listing of the former nations that the finalist players have played in earlier in their career.